


The Crumbling

by MysteriousSunshine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Family, Friendship, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Short Story, Underground society, complex mother-daughter relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MysteriousSunshine/pseuds/MysteriousSunshine
Summary: Amani is a headstrong girl who lives in an underground community due to an apocalyptic event sixty years ago. Unlike her fellow citizens she is obsessed with the past and the world above. She wants to study it, and one day venture above ground. When catastrophic news spreads throughout her world, Amani gets the chance of a lifetime to see her dreams come alive. Will they be all she ever dreamed of, or will everything crumble away?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello lovely readers. This is my first time posting any of my original work, and I'm way too excited.  
> A little background history about this piece:  
> I wrote this for a 300 level English course a few years ago and recently re-vamped it a bit. We had to read The Road by Cormac Mccarthy and either write an analysis paper on it or write a short story. This is the product of that assignment.  
> Because it is a short story, it's not naturally broken up into chapters, but for readability's sake I'm going to do it at the points where it makes the most sense.  
> I would really appreciate some feedback on this, especially as I might want to do something with this story in the future (whether that's revising this story or creating a longer more detailed novel is yet to be determined.)  
> Ok, I'm done rambling. Enjoy the first chapter!

“Amani! Hey! Hey!”

She raised her head and turned backwards towards the voice that was vigorously trying to get her attention. It was her best friend, Kraven. He still wore his school clothes, a grey sweater and dark pants that were spotted with coal dust from his coal mining lab. For a moment, it was difficult to distinguish him from the hundreds of similarly-dressed people in the room.

“I see it’s your turn to collect rations,” he said, gesturing towards her still open book with a knowing smile.

“Duh,” Amani said, drawing the word out so that it buzzed in her throat and hung in the dry, slightly stale air. Kraven knew how much she hated having to be the dinner girl, especially when she was in the middle of a particularly interesting read. This time it was a book about an abnormal girl who lived in what used to be Arizona.

“I saw you had mandatory wax cleanup duty again today,” Kraven said as he rocked on his heels each time the line threatened to move but didn’t. Amani snorted.

“When am I not cleaning up candle wax? I’m starting to hate those things; I wish we had a sun or at least light bulbs. I have no idea why our brilliant ancestors didn’t think to hook this place up with some electricity.”

“What did you do this time?” he asked ignoring her rant.

“You know, reading,” Amani told him waving around the offensive object for emphasis. She was always getting her books taken away, and she had been grounded more times than she could count because of her abysmal grades and in-depth wax cleaning record.

“Maybe you should try to pay attention. You know, when we pass our theoreticals and practical’s, we’ll have to get a job; unless you want to clean wax forever you should try and pick at least one topic to take seriously,” Kraven said.

“I just think that the Before times are a more interesting topic than anything I can be taught down here,” she informed him. “And maybe I can become the first person to study the Above; I don’t understand why that isn’t part of our lessons.”

“I guess,” Kraven said, unconvinced. She knew what he thought of her reading activities; he didn’t see what was so special about the world above them. But being her best friend, he learned that she didn’t need anyone to agree with her, she just needed someone to understand and accept that this was the way she was.

* * *

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said for the past five minutes or have you finally cleaned enough wax that it has plugged up your ears!!” Amani’s mother yelled during dinner. Amani looked up from her barely-touched food, which was potato and carrot soup. She angled her gaze downward where the rest of her family sat eating on her parent’s shelf, their outlines sharp in the backdrop of flickering candlelight. She could make out her dad’s brown head bent over his soup and her five-year-old brother waving his spoon around as he chattered at him. She saw her mother’s face peering up at her. Amani had to admit that when she wasn’t scowling or screeching, her face was quite pretty, pale, unlined paper and framed in black curls. However, because she was both scowling and screeching she more resembled an enraged, cracking stone.

“Yes, Unfortunately, I have been listening,” Amani sighed. The entire community was privy to Amani’s nightly reprimanding. No one even paid attention to it anymore even as her mother’s voice grew in volume and pitch, far surpassing the minimum level appropriate for the distance between them.

“I am sick of you always getting into trouble. How hard is it to get your head out of the stone wall for five minutes so you can learn something and not be a slouch-about, miserable, do-nothing,” her mother continued. Amani lifted her eyebrows in mock appreciation; slouch-about was a new one. She looked beside her to the adjacent column, hoping to share her new identifier with someone who would laugh with her so she wouldn’t have to contemplate her own hurt feelings. If she scooted to the very edge she could reach her hand into the neighboring bunk which happened to be Kraven’s. They had been shelf neighbors since she was old enough to move into her own. Unfortunately, Kraven had decided to join his family for dinner and eat around the area outside their column.

The communities that they lived in were large, round areas. Built into the stone wall were shelves that were the sleeping areas of the residence. They were large enough for at least three average-sized people to stand, sit, and lay in; they almost resembled the small terraces pictured in books about large houses and quaint gardens. They were stacked eight high and there were about seventy columns that circled the entire area. At maximum, two families could occupy one column. In Amani’s case, she had the third bunk, her little brother Joseph had the second, and her parents had the bottom. Above them lived the Sardins, a very young couple who had just had a baby girl.

“Wow mom, you’ve been getting creative. Usually it’s just lazy, miserable, idiotic dreamer; but to day you pulled out the big guns,” she said, scooping up a wrinkled square of potato with her spoon and pressing it to her lips, hoping that her mother would drop it; though she was sure that her response had ensured the opposite.

“That’s your problem, you always think this is some sort of game. Newsflash Amani, you’re not a little girl anymore and you need to get your head out of your ass and out of those books,” her mother said viciously, emphasizing her words with the scrape of her metal spoon across her bowl.

“Yeah, because your so much better. All you do is wash other people’s dirty laundry. I’d rather have my head stuck up my own ass than to have it stuck up someone else’s,” Amani yelled, dropping her spoon onto the stone floor of her shelf and causing the soup to slosh and spread over her feet.

“Shut your mouth, Amani! I don’t want to catch you talking to your mother like that again. She helps contribute to this Podron just as I do and just as you will in the near future,” her dad said. Amani instantly relaxed, if only a fraction. She always listened to her dad; he was often the only one on her side and he only deemed it necessary to yell at her when he felt that she deserved it. He didn’t exactly condone her reading behavior, but he had long ago given up yelling and punishing her for it. For his sake, and his sake alone, Amani had tried to avoid getting in trouble, but somethings couldn’t be helped.

“Harper, you need to drop it. She has received punishment from her teacher already and there is nothing else for it at the moment,” he continued.

“Nothing else for it? Adam, she is constantly disregarding rules set by the authority in her life. She better start shaping up or the Stones will get her,” she said. Amani rolled her eyes, having heard this before. The Stones were the police force that patrolled the communities and kept them safe. There was barely ever any crime because it was dealt with efficiently. There were no prisons like in Amani’s books so instead the punishments were limited to temporary and permanent exile from a community, the loss of a finger or hand, death, and the worst punishment of all, banishment to the Above. Though this threat wasn’t new to Amani, it was new to her little brother, Joseph who drew in a surprised and fearful breath.

“No, Mani can’t go to the Stones! She can’t, Mama. She’ll be good, I promise she’ll be good. Won’t you Mani, won’t you be good?” he asked frantically, his voice turning teary. Amani gritted her teeth, cursing her mother as she edged her way down the latter to the bottom and scooped her brother in her arms.

“Shh, it’s ok Joey, I’m not going to the Stones,” she told him, rocking him back and forth like she did when he was a baby.

“But Mama said you were,” he wailed. Again, Amani gritted her teeth, planning to have some choice words later.

“She was just upset with me, that’s all. She didn’t mean it. If you calm down, I’ll let you have a sleep over at my shelf tonight,” she promised. He sniffled a few more times but pulled himself together and wriggled out of her grasp ant back to his meal.


	2. Chapter 2

“I can’t believe she said that in front of him,” Kraven whispered. They were in a hidden corner of their community dedicated to housing books. Amani was thumbing through an ancient-looking dictionary; she was trying to find the definition for a barbecue.

“I can. She’s always so careless with him; I think she forgets how little and scared kids can be.”

“Maybe she’s never known that. You’ve never been afraid of anything,” Kraven reminded her.

“I’ve never found anything to be afraid of. Nothing down here can hurt us; it’s like we live in some kind of untouchable sphere where nothing bad can ever happen,” she responded, running her pointer finger along the blank space under the faded picture of a barbecue grill.

“We’re going to be late for Applications of Chemical Farming,” Kraven announced. Amani reluctantly tore her gaze from the picture to the overly large clock. They still had thirty minutes until class began but Amani could see the barely-disguised boredom in his eyes.

“Fine,” she said, running her hand across the page lovingly one last time before shutting the book. She stood and as she did, she noticed that bits of the brittle paper broke off and stuck to her hand. She rubbed them together and watched as the small particles fell to the floor, disappearing into the darkness where the candle light didn’t reach.

She was on a rocky ledge halfway up a purplish-grey mountain side. The air was sharply cold and had a taste absent of coal-dust, sulfur, or stale oxygen. The rock beneath her feet was slick and upon bending to feel why, her hand came into contact with a coldly wet solid material that matched the description of ice. A sound reached her ears and she straightened up to see a four-legged creature barreling past her and up the mountain, as sure-footed on the icy slope as she was on the floors of her community. The sound changed from an unfamiliar guttural noise to a high-pitched keening. IN response to the sound, the mountain began to tremble. Rocks slipped from under her feet and the peak of the mountain folded down like a man bowing to pray. Suddenly, she had nothing holding her up and she floated there for one terrifying second before plummeting into darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

“Attention all Podron 4 residence, please congregate in the food room. I repeat, all Podron 4 residence, please congregate in the food room.”

It was past midnight according to the community clock. Amani jerked up at the sound of the first announcement, feeling as though she had fallen from some great height. Her breathing was fast paced and it took her a while to process the keening alarm, garbled words, and the rush of activity around the community as people hurriedly through on whatever was at hand. She stood and quickly pulled on her day sweater and a pair of jeans. A quick glance beside her showed that Kraven was doing the same. He had re-lit his candle and for a second their eyes met and they could read the apprehension in each other’s stares.

The food room was past its advisable capacity. Everyone from all four communities that made up Podron 4 was there in varying degrees of dress. Mothers wearing thin night gowns and thick sweaters cradled crying and pouty children. Kids too old to be held grumbled and shuffled along in sleepy complaint. She saw Mr. Turner, her applications of chemical farming teacher, shuffling towards the front, his arm wrapped around his heavily-pregnant wife.

“If I could have your attention!” Leader Rodgers called, his voice rising over the crowd. He was a stooped man with short tufts of grey hair and a clean-shaven face. His eyes were a gentle brown up close, but from afar they were shadowed and could come off as menacing. To either side of him were stones, looking solemn in their grey tunics, black pants, and glistening chain whips. The wave of crying, disgruntled youth, frantic, whispering mothers, and the low rumble of worried male voices died down to a quieter lapping.

“I am sorry if we have alarmed you and stolen you away from your sleep, but some important intelligence has just been received from Podron 77.”

Amani knew that Paudron 77 was the leader of the entire Podronage. It housed some of the brightest minds in farming, coal attainment and conservation, construction, and environmental purification. Amani had dreamed of one day journeying to Podron 77 as the first historian and the first person to set foot on the Above since the Abandonment. 

“As you all know, when our ancestors built this haven soon after intelligence of nuclear waste being hurtled into the depths of space was leaked, they stock piled food, oxygen, candles and batteries, flashlights, water, clothing, machinery, and technology as advanced as they could find. They spent almost a century creating this world. We have benefitted from their efforts for almost 60 years; even coming up with more effective ways to produce genetically-modified crops that don’t require sunlight. However, the time has come. We are slowly but surely running low on resources vital to our continuation. In about a year’s time we will be forced to journey to the Above and try to make a life for ourselves,”

The crowd blew into uproarious shock after that. The adults were in various states of distress; some sobbing while others shook their fists and shouted unintelligible questions at Leader Rodgers, who, to his credit, took everything in stride and tried to provide calm answers as best as he could. The children, incensed by their parent’s behavior, lapsed back into teary panic.

“I don’t believe it,” Kraven shouted as he leaned into Amani. She could see is face; paler than usual with a greenish tent. His blue eyes were wide and she could see the naked fear in him. She reached for his hand, his mother grasping him from the other side. Amani could feel her dad’s stomach and chest pressed against her back; his voice a repression of panic as he tried to calm a hysterical Joseph. Even her mother rested a trembling hand on the shoulder that was not pressed against Kraven’s.

“A year’s time,” Amani whispered. She didn’t quite know how to feel. At Leader Rodgers’s announcement, her heart had dropped to an area around her knee caps. But she couldn’t distinguish whether it was fear or excitement of her dream finally coming true; she would get to see the world that she had been persecuted for studying about. But something nipped and tugged at her consciousness; an image of rock falling away into nothingness.


	4. Chapter 4

What are we going to do, Adam?” Amani turned over. It was early morning. Usually, her dad was at work in the water purification crevice but he had taken more days off in the aftermath of the announcement.

“Harper, we have no choice; we’ll have to go up there in a year.”

“It’s dangerous, we could die. We have no idea what’s up there.”

“Probably nothing.” Her dad said, a slight edge to his voice.

“That’s what I’m worried about most of all.”

Amani carefully crept to the front of her shelf and peered down. One of her parents had lit a candle and they were sitting just outside the column. Her mother’s coal-colored hair shone faintly in the flame. 

“

There will be nothing down here in a year; you heard what Rodgers said,” her dad explained. Her mom sighed and laid her head on his shoulder.

“We’re going to die.”

Amani had never heard her mother sound so defeated; she was always so vocal and aggressive. She never took no for an answer and despite their many altercations, Amani knew her to be as unyielding and protective as the very stones that surrounded her. On Impulse, Amani squirmed to the latter and climbed carefully down. She sat on her mother’s left and stared at them.

“Mani, what are you doing up,” her dad asked, reaching his arm to pat her shoulder. Now that she was close, she could see the dark circles under his eyes.

“Are we really going to die?” She hadn’t meant to ask that question; she wasn’t afraid of the above; at least, she thought she wasn’t. She had read all about that world and even though all of the people, animals, and man-made structures were gone, she still believed that she had an inkling of an idea of what would be there. But she had also never known her mother to fear anything; her certainties were beginning to flicker.

“No, your mom’s just worried,” her dad began. Her mother shot up abruptly and gave her husband a baleful look.

“Don’t lie to her, Adam. She deserves the truth,” she said harshly. Amani’s dad looked lost as her mother showed a rare tendency and beckoned Amani to scoot closer; she did so reluctantly.

“You of all people should know the answer to your question,” her mother said, but it was all wrong. It was lacking sarcasm or scolding.

“But maybe we can find life again. It was done once; the Above hadn’t always been a livable paradise,” Amani explained carefully, not knowing how to respond to this rarely-seen gentleness. Her mother scoffed slightly, allowing Amani to regain some familiar footing.

“Oh, Honey. The Above was never a paradise; I would have thought that all the time you spent in those books of yours would have taught you that,” she said bitterly. Amani looked up confusedly and her mother bestowed her with a sardonic smile.

“My mom once lived in the Above; she saw the complete undoing of the world way before the Abandonment. She would tell me stories, late at night. She told of rapes and murders, and horrible people doing unthinkable things all in the name of their beliefs,” she whispered lowly, running her hand threw Amani’s brown locks. Amani shuddered. 

“She even told me that it was meant for that rocket to blow up in our faces; some twisted people wanted to start over, to build a new world. And they pretty much got their wish when 2/3 of the world’s population fell dead like dominos.”

She had not known that those things were so prevalent in the Above; and her mind flinched at the prospect that someone could purposely cause such devastation on millions of innocent people. She had only read of the large, sprawling suburbs, buzzing metropolises, and quaint rural communities. She had read of the roaring blue oceans and warm powdery beaches. She had read of massive Rocky Mountains frosted with snow and ice and slicing through the very heart of the endless sky. Amani’s heart flipped. What if it wasn’t true; what if she knew nothing about the Above. She jerked from her mother’s grasp, fighting down a creeping nausea. Her mother looked at her with and uncomfortable amount of understanding.

“Go,” she said gently and with that, Amani all but threw herself onto the latter and scrambled back into her shelf, nearly falling in her haste.


	5. Chapter 5

“Mani, I’m tired,” Joseph said in a tinny voice. Amani squeezed his gloved hand in commiseration as they sat resting by the Underflow River.

“I know Joey, we’re almost there,” she said, equally as tired. They were towards the back of the large line slowly picking its way through the Podronage towards the exit to the above. Each Podron they passed, the temperature had dropped considerably during what they thought was night and rose to boiling during the day. They had been traveling for over a week, stopping at the abandoned Podrons to rest and eat the remainder of their meals.

“I miss mommy and Daddy,” he continued, using his hand to wipe his dirty face. His once black gloves were streaked with dried snot and grime. Amani said nothing; she hated to think of the day they left. The entire community was a flurry of activity; parents forcing their kids into as many layers of clothing that could fit while knapsacks were either lovingly carried or carelessly tossed away. Amani, Joseph, and their dad had been the first to be completely ready to move out.

* * *

“Harper,” her dad had called. Her mother was still in her night shirt; her hair in a haphazard braid as she sat on her shelf, giving them a vacuous stare. “Harper, what are you doing?” her dad had said as he slung a bag of crackers and water canteens over his shoulders.

“I’m not going,” she said balefully. Al of the activity ceased within Amani’s family.

“You’re what?” Amani asked in disbelief.

“I’m not going, so mind your business!” her mother said. Amani pursed her lips.

“You can’t stay Mommy,” Joseph had whispered. Her mom stood from the shelf as if pushed and swept a hand out wildly to land a blow on Joseph’s cheek. He stumbled back with his hand pressed firmly to his face.

“I can stay and I will. I’m not going up there to die!” 

The alarm rang, a high keening sound.

“We’ve got to go,” Amani said to her dad urgently. She had given up on trying to convince her mother; she wasn’t even sure if she wanted her to accompany them as Joseph’s normally pale cheek flared a bloody red.

“Take your brother and go,” her dad said gruffly, sitting on the shelf.

“Dad…” Amani began to protest. He turned a look on her that was like a knife cutting through the ligaments of her limbs.

“Go, right now or you will have a cheek to match your brother’s.”

With eyes widened to repress the tears, Amani reached out and grabbed Joseph’s hand. As she turned to head towards the congregating masses her dad called her back. She looked at him as he held out the pack with the food and water. She took it from him as if it were the Abandonment itself.

“Mani…” he began but she turned, dragging her balling brother behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

It was time. Amani, Joseph, and Kraven stood in a cluster at the bottom of a stony set of stairs that seemed to climb into forever.

“Well?” Amani said, looking at Kraven. He shook his head; his eyes firmly fixed on the ground. His parents had already gone up and Amani could tell from the set of his vibrating shoulders that the fear was caving in on him.

“I wanna go home,” Joseph whispered. He looked a tad thinner; the traveling party had been stricter on the food rations since the amount of walking people took more food and was rapidly depleting the supply. Amani agreed with her baby brother; part of her wanted to go back to her candle-lit shelf. She wanted her books and her imagination. She wanted her dad to hug her and she wanted her mom yelling at her. But she wasn’t five. She fully understood the implications of her parents staying behind.

“This is home,” Amani told him, gesturing to the stairs. She put one foot on the step, her heart skating around her chest in anxious anticipation. As she put her other foot on the step, part of the step broke away and landed with a dry scrape. She paid no mind and continued upwards; the firm pressure of her brother’s hand and the ragged breathing of Kraven propelling her higher. As she emerged into the exit; the smell of the air shifted to something never-before smelled and yet, familiar. The mountain grew as she paced towards the first of a dozen thick, leaden doors deeply set in the stone. She was on the ledge of something powerful, each door scaling her closer to the tip which cut through the endlessly blue sky. As she reached the final door, the mountain trembled. She could feel it, the celebration; her dreams were within an arm’s reach. She pushed through the dull greyness and every bit of solid ground that had ever cradled her, that had ever persuaded her to trust in its icy hardness, fell away, leaving her to crumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed this story. Let me know if you would like me to do more with this world. I've had a few ideas floating around, but nothing solid yet.


End file.
